It was really cute, and had TONS of books on the shelves that were for sale for $1. I didn’t find anything that I really wanted, though. They did have one of my favorite books, Tokyo Vice, but it was in French.

I got an iced soy milk latte, which was really delicious.

We walked on to one of the bigger temples, Wat Xieng Thong, but it cost 20,000 kip so we decided not to go in and just looked at it from the outside.

We walked back to the guest house because the Germans (Adrian and Falko) were finally up. We got some mango and watermelon from a fruit stand on the way and shared it with the boys. Joe joined us, and we all headed out to go to Kuang Si waterfall together.

We walked to the main road, found a tuk-tuk driver, and negotiated with him until we got the price down from 70,000 to 30,000 kip each.

The drive took about 45 minutes— longer than I had anticipated— and we were dropped off just in front of the entrance.

We paid the 20,000 kip entrance fee, walked through a bear sanctuary (Adrian accidentally pronounced it “beer” and then we went on for five minutes about how we must “free the beer” by rescuing them from their terrible refrigerated traps), and then reached the first swimming area.

The water was freezing! We waded around for a bit and then moved on up— the waterfall was made of 3 or 4 tiers of pools that you could swim in, each higher than the last.

Crazy treePretty pools

We got to the top, which was the actual Kuang Si waterfall. It was STUNNING. I think it’s the most beautiful waterfall i’ve seen in my life. It looked like it was from a storybook, and I was blown away. I stood there for a good five minutes, just staring at it, marveling at its majesty.

We exited the park and I got some roasted sweet potato from one of the street vendors. So good!

We tuk-tuked back to town, showered, and then headed off to dinner.

We went down the street to Bamboo Restaurant. It didn’t seem particularly amazing, but it was cheap so that was really the deciding factor.

The place was weird— there were small bugs everywhere—I even had a bug in my rice. Joe found a bug plus a random twig in his food.

I ordered seaweed soup, which I guess is meant for sharing because the waitress brought my food out along with five soup bowls, which I assumed was so that I could pour some soup for everyone. But it was really just seaweed and some mushrooms, so I was able to eat it all on my own.

After dinner, we went to the night market just to walk around for a bit. I got a banana/passionfruit smoothie. The others went to a rooftop bar, but I walked back to the guesthouse because I was completely exhausted.